Some Musings by a CYOA Author

I've been around the threads for a decent amount of time, so I guess I can throw my two (rather long) cents to help other authors to strive. More quality content is always welcome.

I'm going to use personal experiences as examples, as hopefully they can provide insight to you. If you don't like that sort of thing, then this paste isn't for you.

Don't worry. By quality, I don't mean a photoshopped masterpiece. Good CYOAs can come in a graphic-less package; to me, making something worth reading is more about knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and applying them to this medium. It sounds corny, but you really should learn to take that to heart. In fact, that kind of doesn't just apply to CYOAs.

Keep in mind that this isn't a tutorial. Rather, the point in this paste is to hopefully provide clarity in the do's and don't's of creating a CYOA. I mean, things you should consider before delving into making a CYOA. I'm aiming to pour out anything I can so that hopefully even more veteran designers can learn something here.

Take everything you read here with a grain of salt. These are my musings.

==Scope==
The first thing I want to highlight is actually the most important in my opinion. It's the motivation to make something, and I see too many people give up before finishing something that could've been great. It happens to everyone, but I've found that it's really dependent on your goals; ambition and motivation are two opposing forces, so you must be wary to not attempt to do something you can't chew through. Creating a very large CYOA with hundreds of choices takes a hell of a lot of time, and putting effort into its graphics will take even more. I come across this problem many times when I go to the drawing board; for -every- completed product I've made, I've cut corners that I wish I could fulfill, but couldn't.

One good, personal example of this Battlemage, a CYOA about picking your equipment, companions, and your magical powers from different element "trees". Originally, I designed it so that there would be 20 different spells for each element "tree", and that seemed like a decent idea at the time. Across the four trees I originally came up with, there were 80 spells I had to create. It became pretty apparent that as the more element trees I wanted to come out with, 20 spells per element became a nightmare. This led to many problems, such as "reskinned" spells appearing across several of the trees, or the strain to find 20 images that fit the spell descriptions I'd struggled to come out with. I went into a writer's block on this CYOA for many months. I don't consider myself very creative in terms of coming up with things like these, so I had to make a design choice half-way through the CYOA's development to cut the amount of spells per element tree in half. This helped get rid of the "reskinned" spell problem, allowed more uniqueness in the choices readers would make, and above all, it rekindled my motivation. Designing new element trees was no longer as straining, and I went on to complete the CYOA. Many people still complain that 20 spells per element would have been better, but my largest argument against this is that I simply am incapable of achieving this. It's either I cut down the CYOA's scope to accommodate my weakness, or I attempt to keep up with my ambition which would probably have resulted in an abandoned CYOA.

In the end, passion comes into play. You can not create something good unless you want to create it. You can see that all of the CYOAs which have sparked at least some discussion have had a generous amount of passion put into them. You know that setting you've always been dreaming about? That story idea you're itching to write? Use that as a backdrop or motivation. Suddenly you'll find yourself dishing out pages of ideas. Hell, have you ever had an epiphany of an idea while playing another CYOA? Use that imagination to make something.

Here's a good exercise: create a build in either Magic Realm or Domain Master CYOA, then create a CYOA in that setting.

==Originality==
No, this doesn't mean to have a completely obscure setting that's only ever been thought about by you. By originality, I mean to ask this question: How will your CYOA achieve something not done by something else? It's hard to explain, so let me highlight an example.

I was talking with some other anons from the thread about the conundrum of the many fantasy-setting CYOAs. Let's face it; fantasy settings are very easy to build upon, and the setting practically writes itself. You will see many of these CYOAs floating around, and while some truly do hold originality, others are husks of the opposite. It's almost unavoidable at this point, but a typical fantasy-type CYOA will have something along the lines of: pick your weapon & equipment, pick your powers & perks, pick your companion, pick your adventure. Of course, everything has a neat twist to it, but if you're going to be creating something like this, what's the point? How will yours shine?

Fortunately, there are actually many, many ways you can make yours different. You can go by setting, where a strong backdrop of interesting characters, politics, mannerisms, culture, and whatnot will get your readers interested in playing within that world. Kingdom A is a lot more interesting than Kingdom B because A is completely populated by a race of capitalist bears. However, Kingdom C has a cute princess you can marry. You can go by choices, where instead of making the readers simply choose between a sword an an axe, you can instead make them choose between animal familiars that turn into weapons. If you want to sell out and pander to the /tg/ audience, make the weapons also turn into waifus. There you go, now it sells. Got a CYOA idea for a simple choice between X, Y, and Z? Throw the reader into a fiery pit full of flesh-eating naked mole rats where they must make their decision in order to survive it.

Okay, maybe that last one will only net you a single or double thread's amount of discussion, but it's a start, right? I threw those ideas together in minutes of brainstorming bullshit while talking with other anons; it's not hard. But true originality takes time and considers the entire scope of the CYOA, and I guarantee that thoughtful effort in originality will spark discussion.

I want to emphasize that, by thoughtful, I mean within reason. Please keep your CYOA ideas tangible.

Consider ArchDemon Roommate CYOA. I came into the threads one day and asked what people thought about roommate CYOAs. These are CYOAs that usually offer choices between several different "roommates" for you to live with, and each came with their pros and cons. I got a moderate response, mostly highlighting that people disliked it when the choices had blaring negative consequences, so I took that into consideration. I took the CYOA concept and decided to go a bit overboard with it. It wouldn't just be normal roommates, it'd be ArchDemons. But for that to happen, you'd have to go to Hell. How'd you get to Hell? You died, of course. What awaited you in Hell? Well, people didn't want it to be too negative, so I made Hell a rather modern and livable place. Despite your roommates being powerful demons who embody one of the seven deadly sins, I used those concepts to make them likable and appealing. Sloth's a snuggledemon while Wrath's protective of you. Then I decided to introduce something different: continue the "storyline" of the CYOA. After a year of playing the slave, Hell shows its true fervour when the Devil offers you to enslave your mistress. Your reward of suffering (even though I tried to lessen the concept of said suffering) through the year is clear: you get a cute ArchDemon as a slave for the rest of goddamn eternity.

I took an existing concept and put a simple, over-the-top twist into it. The ideas piled onto my plate. It wrote itself.

==Appeal==
Know your audience. Trust me when I say that if you get tunnel vision and create a CYOA without considering your audience, it might not come with a good result.

Appealing to your audience can sometimes sound like selling out. I won't lie, I'm very guilty of this. An easy way to a /tg/er's heart is through waifus, and while I don't mind a good waifu CYOA now and then, I'm trying to avoid using this route for CYOAs that aren't centered around waifus. I don't think it's a good design choice to use unrelated cheapshot concepts like this to drive your CYOA. If it's not done properly, it will probably change your CYOA's core concept in the eyes of your readers (or even worse, yourself). Alas, we live in an age of materialism, so in order to strive, you have to tickle fancies. You have to really figure out a balance between selling something to your readers while not making it look like it's pandering. Unfortunately, I have yet to really find this balance.

I mean, unless you really want to create a CYOA that's just about pandering. Those can work and are guaranteed to cause discussions, but that's not really what I want to encourage in this paste.

A big problem I had with ArchAngel Roommate CYOA was how to make it appeal to people. The most monumental task was to make the goody-two-shoes Angels compete with the roommates of the previous CYOA, Archdemon Roommate. At first I was reluctant in even tackling ArchAngel Roommate, but I took the time to consider how to make the boring concept of Heaven be just as appealing as the interesting world of Hell that I've created. To me, Hell was a hit with the thread. It was both vague enough to let reader imagination run wild while being solid enough to give them an idea that Hell isn't that bad of a place. In contrast to that, I decided to follow through with the same mentality: make Heaven seem like it isn't that good of a place. Not that it's a bad place, but that it forgoes the whole idea of a chaste Heaven. Even still, that was boring.

How do I make Heaven sound like it wasn't a reskin of Hell? I hint throughout the CYOA that Heaven -was- a chaste place in times before, and that the people who govern Heaven ("Big G" and Michelle) have decided to take a liberal approach in recent times. Governing structure? Why not make one of the ArchAngel roommates a bureaucrat... or a president. The virtue of Patience versus the sin of Wrath? Well, Patience doesn't exactly forbid violence (okay, maybe it does), but I thought making the Patience angel into the General of Heaven's Army made her pretty damn appealing. I had her embody the concept of Patience in her personality; in a contrast to her violent career, she likes to relax and sit by the ocean and let time tick by. Diligence doesn't exactly embody self-control, so Kristel was a shameless DJ who didn't mind getting close with you. Chastity? Mind break, who cares about the rules. That still stems from the virtue's concept. Temperance? I'm gonna make Esme the complete opposite of that, but make her try to act like she's the embodiment of the virtue, no matter how thin her charade.

==Design==
I know what I said before: graphics isn't entirely necessary. But design isn't the same as graphics. Design encompasses your CYOA no matter what. Design is how your readers see your CYOA.

You can't go wrong with a simple text document. The text is easily readable, you can add images here and there depending on what program you use, you can change fonts and styles a little. But for the most part, a text document is purely about presenting the guts of your product: the writing.

Believe it or not, text has design to it, even if you simply go with default fonts and no pictures for your CYOA. I should clarify: you can't go wrong with a simple text document -while- utilizing default fonts. Default fonts (TNR, Arial, Helvetica, etc) are all fonts made to be legible at the default font size (usually 12).

So then you decide to step into the world of more vibrant design choices. Maybe you've seen a nice looking font you want to use and you decide to use it. Consider this carefully: how hard is it to read your text now? Does it make you squint your eyes? Does it strain them? Hell, does it even make your eyesight stutter a little bit, no matter how minuscule? If yes, then you've made a bad design choice. No, this doesn't mean to back-track immediately before the world ends. If it's a minuscule problem, it's a minuscule bad design choice. Just be mindful that it will affect your reader's experience.

For body text, you always want to stick with clean, easy-to-read fonts. If you have a portion of text that's more than five words, it's probably better to have it as an easy-to-read font. However, if you have a simple title or name, feel free to stylize it. This is what stylish text is for: eyecandy, and it's best reflected in the titles that represent your CYOA, right? Besides, you usually want to have your titles a larger font size than your body text, so titles can accommodate more complex graphics.

The second most important thing when considering design is your colour choices. Again, you can't go wrong with the default: black text on white background. It's the perfect contrast whose singular goal is legibility. White text on grey background is even better, as it promotes less eye strain.

The two main things you have to consider when choosing your colours is contrast and eye strain, which go hand-in-hand. Is your text contrasted enough with its background to be easy to read? Is it too contrasted to make it hard to read? Are the colours too saturated? One of the things I hate the most in bad design is oversaturation. I spend a lot of time just picking the colours to use, and you'll notice in a lot of my works that the colours I like to roll with are rather modest. Even in something vibrant like Battlemage, I choose blues, reds, and greens that have a healthy mix of greyish shades mixed in. Saturation is for things you want to emphasize or highlight. A border around a title? Make it glow to show its brilliance.

==Images & Art==
As somebody who likes to pin their CYOA choices to an image, I spend a hell of a lot of time art scouting. I save a hell of a lot of images, most of which I'll never end up using for the immediate purpose. If I want to find an image to represent a fireball spell, I usually don't stop image scouting until I have some 5 different fireball images to choose from. This sounds stupid and wasteful. I agree, it can be, and it's not as necessary as other design choices. But my absolute goal when it comes to picking images for a CYOA is consistency. If none of those 5 fireball images feel like they're aligned with the iceball spell's image, I might have to go scout for more fireball images. Normally I don't stop art scouting until I find something that fits my CYOA's overall design.

One thing I hate seeing is when people choose images for characters and the style of the images are drastically different. For example, if you're going to have a catalog of companions, don't make some of them photos of people in real life and others from anime. I mean, unless you have some sort of theme or concept to explain that, don't do it. This is just an extreme example of the sort of design choice I want to avoid.

One easy workaround to this is to use art from the same artist, or artists whose styles are similar. If you find an artist's DeviantArt account after searching through so many fireball images and see that they have a lot of other interesting art, save all of it. You never know if you'll need some of it, and I can vouch that this is an effective way to achieve consistency.

But hey, if you yourself can draw, then that solves all of these problems. Unfortunately, I can't draw.

==Feedback==
Be very wary on how you handle feedback. It can be a double edged sword; either it helps you balance and refine your CYOA further, or it makes you take two steps backwards.

Star Dust CYOA went through years of revisions and countless, countless discussions. As a creator, I like to gather up as much feedback as possible and usually try to answer as much as I can when I'm in the process of designing a CYOA. All of the feedback was extremely helpful, but at times, I wasn't wary to the problems it can cause. For example, one reader would tell me that one piece of equipment you can attach to your ship is too costly. Upon responding to that concern and updating the CYOA, a completely different reader would complain that I've made that piece of equipment too powerful for its cost. This sort of throwback was the majority of Star Dust's development, and it being a CYOA heavy with complicated stats with an even more complicated cost system made development a nightmare. I suppose it goes without saying that trying to create a complicated system made things difficult for me, but I was not prepared for such frequent and massive paradigm shifts between opinions on the CYOA. What people wanted to see in the CYOA a year ago would likely be extremely different than those today.

One thing that I was blind to during my development of Star Dust is that you, the creator, know the most about your CYOA. There is nobody else who shares your exact same design scheme, so always, always, always take people's feedback with a grain of salt. If you feel that someone's feedback goes against your scope, then don't follow through with it, no matter how insistent they are.